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Friday, September 11, 2009

Always Midnight

Seconds grate into minutes, numbers glowing red in the black room. The colour reminds her of blood and she can almost smell the coppery scent, but it’s just the ghostly splatters that she’s remembering. Droplets of crimson mixed with shattered glass glimmering on the bathroom floor, a broken mirror the evidence of their last fight.

The clock slips into 12:03, hours after she has swept up the fragments and washed away his blood and bandaged his fist only to have him walk out the door, eyes dark and empty.

The last train left at midnight, three minutes and she knows she should have been on it, should have left and gone home where it was safe. It was pointless to stay here; she was more alone in his empty bedroom than she would have been cocooned in her own sheets. Not that it mattered; both places smelled of the other, had the other’s imprint stamped upon it in the form of scent, touch, taste.

Her lower lip was swollen, worried between teeth as she huddled upright, knees hugged to her chest as she wondered when it all started to go wrong. When had pain medication been replaced with substances far more dangerous? When had she grown afraid of letting him leave on his own, when had she known that it was past simply trying to forget the pain and morphing into trying to forget feeling at all?

Sooner or later he would stumble into his apartment, eyes blurry with alcohol and things she didn’t dare ask. She’d be pressed into the mattress; skin abused with nips and a grip stronger than the he remembered having. And through it all she would cling to pale shoulders, close her eyes and try to find the love that had once filled her heart.

It was fading. With every midnight spent aching, inside and out. With every train that left and she stayed, praying that things would change. That when she hugged him, his heart beat thudding in her ear, he would hug him back instead of just letting his arms lie limply at his sides.

But she stayed, looking for something in those dark eyes, some semblance of the man she fell in love with… for the future they once dreamed of. She stayed because of the moments he was sober, in the mornings when he would curl up on the floor of the shower, his shoulders shaking with sobs as the pain returned to his neck and the drugs left his system and he remembered what he’d done. It was those times, as he’d look at her, eyes filled with all the emotion he tried to forget, and whispered, “Why, Why do you stay, you must be crazy,” that made her pause.

Maybe she was crazy. It was insanity to be sitting here; waiting to find something she wasn’t sure still existed. He didn’t see her; he was oblivious to everything but the needles of pain shooting through his spine, and the steps he took to alleviate it. But she’d rather be crazy than admit to herself the truth.

12:12am the clock shifted again and the creak of a door was heard. He was home. Closing her eyes she lay down and pressed her cheek into the mattress, willing away the tears that burned behind her eyelids as clumsy fingers tugged away the covers and rolled him over.

It was Midnight and in the harsh caresses that followed, the fevered words mumbling past dried lips, she’d never felt so alone.

And afterwards, when the other collapsed on top of her and she had to roll him off, when she had to ignoring the hurt and she would place him on his side, she would press her tear damp cheek to his and whisper in ears dead to the world, “Why? Why don’t you see me anymore? Are you blind?”